Managing Sharepoint Upgrades And Migration: Steps To Minimize Downtime

Upgrading SharePoint: Why It’s Necessary and How to Minimize Downtime

SharePoint is a powerful collaboration and document management platform that has become ubiquitous across enterprises. However, with the rapid pace of updates and new feature releases, it becomes critical to upgrade older SharePoint environments regularly. While upgrades unlock functionality, enhance security, integration, and more, the prospect of downtime and business disruption is worrisome.

This 6000-word guide covers end-to-end SharePoint upgrade best practices – from assessment and planning to execution and validation. By meticulously minimizing downtime, you can harness the power of the latest SharePoint while avoiding productivity losses.

Assessing Your Current SharePoint Environment

Upgrading SharePoint without fully grasping the current environment risks unintended downtime consequences. Begin by taking stock of the existing deployment details before planning the upgrade journey:

Table of Contents

Catalog all SharePoint platforms and versions in use across the organization
Identify site collections, features enabled, custom solutions installed per environment
Document external services, workflows and data integrations tied to SharePoint
Interview site owners to capture usage data, pain points with current platform
Analyze logs and metrics to quantify traffic, storage consumption growth trends

Additionally, align with organizational goals to identity target business outcomes for the upgrade like improved mobility, security hardening, migration to the cloud, reduced TCO, faster search, etc.

Equipped with a detailed as-is analysis, you can determine upgrade feasibility, timelines and accurately communicate expectations with stakeholders.

Preparing for a SharePoint Upgrade

With upgrade goals clearly defined, commence planning by:

Assembling a cross-functional upgrade team including IT admins, developers, site owners, security and compliance heads, end-user representatives, external vendors
Identifying a project manager responsible for devising an executable upgrade plan with tasks & owners, managing timelines and communication
Securing executive sponsorship, budget and allocating human resources for the upgrade
Backing up site collections, SharePoint configuration database, content databases and IIS settings
Provisioning adequate storage, network bandwidth as per projected growth
Freezing customization changes to production environment post initial assessment

Furthermore, provide multiple upgrade dry runs on staging environments and staggered pilot testing for user feedback before disrupting production systems.

Minimizing Downtime During the Upgrade

While upgrading production SharePoint, focus on preserving availability through methods like:

Database Attach Upgrade

Using this zero-downtime approach, you provision and upgrade a parallel SQL database alongside the existing content databases. After synchronization, switch the production front-ends to point to the new database for negligible downtime.

Upgrading in Stages by Site Collection

Upgrade one site collection at a time, while keeping others online byplacing them in read-only, offline or maintenance mode with custom error pages.

Scheduling Off-Peak Upgrades

Study site usage patterns and schedule upgrades during periods of lowest traffic to minimize user impact.

Transition Site

Create a scaled-down interim site with key content, search access and site navigation to support business continuity if an unexpected downtime occurs.

Additionally minimize risk by upgrading SharePoint components incrementally, disabling unused features post upgrade and scheduling sufficient buffers between steps.

Verifying Upgrade Success

Before migrating end-users to newly upgraded environments:

Perform extensive testing of sites, apps, workflows, integrations with guidance from business users
Tune and optimize performance based on usage patterns
Monitor application, IIS logs and site stability for post upgrade issues
Compare usage data with Google Analytics pre-upgrade baselines
Verify content migration, user permissions post upgrade
Confirm retention policies, DLP policies and eDiscovery is fully functional
Provide self-help guides, training to users on new features, changes

Steps to Smoothly Migrate Content to SharePoint Online

Transitioning from on-premise SharePoint to Office 365 requires meticulous content migration planning for success:

Audit terabytes of SharePoint data and prune unused content to simplify migration
Map on-premise sites, libraries to the target SharePoint online structure
Extract metadata from source content for tagging in the cloud repository
Utilize SharePoint migration tools like Sharegate, Avepoint, METAlogix for content and permission orchestration
Validate permission levels and security post migration through audits
Redirect prior SharePoint links to new URLs using URL mapping data
Provide self-service training, updated process assets aligned with Office 365 environments

Additionally, provide staged site collection testing, reference the Microsoft 365 adoption framework and have rollback procedures should unforeseen migration issues emerge.